


let me sleep, i am tired of my grief

by inevitablemeow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ? - Freeform, Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky is 26, But It's All Very Soft, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Shrunkyclunks, Steve is about 33, Top Steve Rogers, ghosts spirits specters, soulmates in a roundabout way, there's a cameo at the end but i won't spoil it, which is the only angst i am capable of tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 19:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inevitablemeow/pseuds/inevitablemeow
Summary: There’s a man in the woods....There’s something so achingly familiar about him. Steve feels like he should know him. He should know him, but he doesn’t. His heart yearns in a way he can’t fathom as he watches the man search the woods with wide eyes.So familiar. But… he shouldn’t be here.“FRIDAY!” he shouts over the roar of the rain. “There’s a man!”“You are the only one here, Captain,” says FRIDAY, voice piped through the speakers outside the back door. “I sense no other presence.”“He’s right there!” Steve says desperately, taking one unsteady step forward.The man’s face snaps to meet his, and Steve watches those round eyes go wide with fear. The man’s hands come up as if to ward Steve away, and he stumbles away a few steps before he’s just… gone. As if Steve’s blinked and the man was never there.----or; Steve is haunted by a ghost.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 107





	let me sleep, i am tired of my grief

**Author's Note:**

> Highly recommend listening to this song quietly on repeat as you read: The Wisp Sings by Winter Aid. (That’s how I wrote it. I’ve probably heard this song a hundred thousand times now.)
> 
> Lyrics:
> 
> [Verse 1] (STEVE POV)  
> Let me sleep  
> I am tired of my grief  
> And I would like you  
> To love me, to love me, to love me  
> This is the night when these woods sigh  
> Come with me  
> There are people who cannot speak  
> Without smiling
> 
> [Verse 2] (BUCKY POV)  
> They would take me from your hand  
> Or they would try, they would try  
> This is the murmur of the land  
> This is the sound of love's marching band  
> And how they hold you like a gun  
> And how I sing you like a song  
> I heard when I was young  
> And buried for a night like this  
> Buried for a night, like this

——

It’s July, and Steve watches with a gentle satisfaction as a storm brews above the Compound. It’s his favorite weather, and he waits for the haze of it to settle over the woods that surround his now home. Hopefully, this will be a good one.

Home is quiet today and Steve feels the solitude in his bones. Sam and Natasha are abroad for the new SHIELD, Tony and Bruce are in the city more often than not these days, and Wanda and Pietro are on what might be a permanent vacation in Europe. He’s the only one left.

His bare feet carry him through the empty Compound out to the concrete patio, and he sighs deep as he feels the thick air breeze over the bare skin of his arms and neck. His eyes slide closed, and he tips his face skyward. The first drops fall, and he smiles.

He feels the electricity in the air, a looming presence that builds until lightning strikes, crackling across the darkened sky in a violent light that sears his eyelids. He counts, the same way he has all his life.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. 

The roar of the first peal of thunder makes him shiver, and rain spills from the clouds in a sudden and heavy downpour.

He laughs, holding his arms out to feel the fat drops of water over his bare skin. There’s another stinging shock of lightning, another handful of heavy seconds, and another tear of thunder.

The rain pools in the yard, bounces off the concrete, bends the branches of the old trees around him as it comes down hard and all-consuming. He’s drenched in only seconds.

His gaze rakes over the forest, eyes blinking to clear away the raindrops that cling to his lashes. The branches flex sharply under the downpour, emerald leaves turning inward as the sky opens up and threatens to drown.

A flash of white has him snapping his head to the left, and the smile slides off his face.

There’s a man in the woods.

He’s standing a few dozen yards beyond the tree line, deep enough that he’s obscured by branches and brush, but Steve’s enhanced eyes see him as if he’s standing within reach.

A hospital gown billows around him like a strong wind is whipping it against his bare legs, but there’s no breeze here. Only rain. The gown is dry, remains dry despite the heavy wash of the rain pouring from the clouds that hang low above them.

Steve frowns, lips parting as he watches him turn in place, looking so lost his heart aches.

Round eyes flick around the woods as the man spins slowly around, and a slender hand comes up to gently press at his own face, down his neck, over his chest. He runs it through his hair, caramel brown and curling slightly on top of his head, ruffling it as he looks up through the trees that make him seem so much smaller than he must be. 

He turns fully until Steve can see the sharp slash of his cheekbones again, and Steve is stunned stupid. He’s young, surely no more than twenty-five, and he’s beautiful, the prettiest thing Steve has ever seen.

There’s something so achingly familiar about him. Steve feels like he should know him. He should _know_ him, but he doesn’t. His heart yearns in a way he can’t fathom as he watches the man search the woods with wide eyes.

So _familiar_. But… he shouldn’t be _here_.

“FRIDAY!” he shouts over the roar of the rain. “There’s a man!”

“You are the only one here, Captain,” says FRIDAY, voice piped through the speakers outside the back door. “I sense no other presence.”

“He’s right there!” Steve says desperately, taking one unsteady step forward.

The man’s face snaps to meet his, and Steve watches those round eyes go wide with fear. The man’s hands come up as if to ward Steve away, and he stumbles away a few steps before he’s just… gone. As if Steve’s blinked and the man was never there.

Steve sucks in a harsh breath and takes off across the lawn, splashing barefoot through puddles that rise to his ankles and mud that sucks at his feet. He crashes through the trees to where the man was standing, just here, he swears he was right _here_.

There aren’t even footprints. 

He spins in place, panting as his frantic eyes search for him, for any sign that he was in these woods. There is nothing. A wave of confusion makes him cold from more than just the rain, and he stumbles backwards to the lawn with his eyes on the spot he’d just seen him. He makes it back to the patio and stands there dripping wet as he waits to see him again.

He doesn’t.

——

He watches the woods until it’s dark, standing sentry at the back door as he looks through the trees for another splash of white. The forest remains empty and looming, and as night falls it sucks the Compound into a clinging darkness.

Exhausted, he gives up.

“FRIDAY,” he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Night Watch Protocol, level two. Wake me for anything, any changes in the Compound.”

“Yes, Captain, will there be anything else before you’re off to bed?” she asks. The lilt in her voice always reminds him of his mother, and he has to take a deep breath before he can answer. It’s harder to hear it when he’s alone, when he hasn’t got Sam there to elbow him, or Natasha to pinch his side.

“No, FRIDAY,” he murmurs as he pads through the empty building. “Thank you. If you see the man, wake me.”

“Would you like me to play your tapes?”

Steve can’t help the fond smile he cracks. “No tapes tonight. Would like to hear more rain, though.”

“On a tent? Or through trees?”

“A tent. Canvas.”

There’s a pause, but Steve can hear the low hum of rain coming from his bedroom. “That should be to your liking,” FRIDAY says. “Your doctor requests that you document your sleep. Would you like me to do that as usual?”

“Sure,” Steve says as he kicks his door shut and peels off his clothes. 

“Goodnight, Captain.”

“Night, FRIDAY.”

FRIDAY goes quiet, leaving him alone with the steady rainfall that cocoons him as he shuffles around his room getting ready to attempt sleep. He hasn’t got much hope for tonight. He can’t stop thinking about the man.

As he lays there in the suffocating dark, his mind goes only to the man’s face, the lost look in his eye, the heartache Steve could almost feel. He’s exhausted as always, and as always it means nothing.

The clock says three thirty-seven the last time he looks at it.

——

His eyes snap open and he shoots up in bed, heart racing as he scrabbles at his sheets. He’s gasping desperately as he throws his legs over and stands, pacing as he wills his pulse to slow.

He sees open ocean. He feels the wind that rushes through a busted cabin. Feels the jarring crash that knocks him down, the freezing water that drowns him slowly, the darkness that swallows him whole, the ice, the _ice_ —.

“Deep breath, Captain, and a slow one.”

Steve lifts his shaking hands to his chest and presses hard, feeling the violent beat of his heart against his ribs. But he does as he’s told. A slow breath in, hold, and slow back out.

A few more of these and he can see straight.

“What time is it?” he croaks, peeking out his window. The sun is barely above the horizon, burning red and orange and yellow through the trees.

“Seven thirteen.”

Steve sighs and dresses himself. 

The day is slow and consists mostly of him trying to distract himself. He reads a book cover to cover, tries to make himself something nice for lunch and is almost successful, watches a few episodes of his favorite show, adds a couple of drawings to his latest sketch book.

It’s late afternoon when his eyes drift to the yard unfocused as his mind wanders. When they’d placed him on leave, he’d thought he’d be better at it than this. The aimlessness, the gut-aching loneliness. He hasn’t had so much free time in all his life. He hates it.

A figure flickers into existence a hundred yards away, and he leaps out of his seat. He sees red peeking through the trees, and he’s off before he can think much further.

It’s overcast again, but the rain has let up. The ground is still soggy under his feet as he runs to the woods. But whatever he saw there is long gone.

He frowns as his eyes rake over the trees, but there’s nothing at all out of the ordinary. A cardinal weaves through the woods and takes off into the sky, and Steve sighs heavy and deep.

A bird. It was a bird.

The walk back inside is long, and his tired body only makes it to the couch before he’s flopping down and pulling a blanket over his head. He feels a round pair of silvered eyes on him, and his skin crawls with the feeling of _other_ that hangs over him like a shroud.

He wishes someone was here to tell him he's not losing his mind.

“Lockdown, FRIDAY,” he says softly, voice muffled by the pile of fabric. “Just let me sleep. I just need sleep.”

“Of course, Captain. I will wake you for emergencies only. Rest well.”

Steve takes a slow, deep breath, and he’s asleep before he finishes letting it go.

——

“You alright, Steve?”

Steve looks up from his useless cup of coffee, blinking blearily as his eyes catch Sam’s. He hadn’t even heard him come in, and by the looks of him, he and Natasha have just come home.

“‘M alright,” Steve murmurs, carding his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

“You don’t look alright,” Natasha says from her perch on the kitchen island. “Have any problems while we were gone?”

He sighs and squeezes his eyes shut. He sees the man in white, sees his terrified eyes, sees the empty space he had occupied for an eternal minute. “I don’t…” he says softly. “I don’t think so. Not really. I think I’m just seeing things. It’s nothing.”

Sam drops into the seat beside Steve’s and takes the coffee cup from his hands. “Seeing what?”

Steve cracks a self-deprecating grin. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. FRIDAY says it was nothing.”

Sam watches him for a long moment, and Steve knows he’s being carefully assessed by a soldier and an assassin. “What was it? When?”

“It was a young man,” Steve says as his brow furrows. “In the woods, three days ago. He wasn’t real. It’s nothing. It was pouring rain, I’m sure it was a trick of the light or the trees or something.”

Sam hums in thought, ringed finger tapping gently at the wooden tabletop. “FRIDAY did a scan?”

“She did,” Steve nods. “It was just me.”

“Did you sleep?” Natasha asks, and Steve knows what she really means by it.

“No worse than usual,” Steve says, catching her knowing eyes with his own guilty ones. “Probably just tired. You know how I am when I’m tired.”

“Painfully oblivious?” Sam asks, tapping his knuckles against Steve’s knee. Steve looks up and finds him smirking, but it’s pained. “You try your exercises?”

Steve sighs and his head drops back. “Did my exercises, listened to my tapes, did everything I’m supposed to. Hardly had any nightmares while you were gone. Promise.”

Sam’s hand gives his knee a quick squeeze before he stands, shaking out his arms as he tugs a hoodie over his head. “Perimeter check, buddy, walk me through it.”

Steve takes him out to the yard and tells him about that afternoon, the way the rain made the forest look like it could swallow him whole. The feeling in the air that made his skin prick, the heaviness of it laying over him like a down blanket. 

“He was there,” he says, pointing to the spot he’s been watching for three days, now. “In a hospital gown. All alone, lost. He heard me talking to FRIDAY and he disappeared.”

Sam traipses out through the brush and inspects the spot carefully, fingers running gently over tree trunks and across low branches. He’s got that look on his face, the one he wears when he’s being cautious, and Steve’s heart kicks at the concern he sees there.

“Disappeared how?” Sam asks, hands on his hips as he spins in place.

Steve shrugs. “Just… poof. Gone.”

Sam sighs, frown deepening with a dash of guilt. “I got nothin’. You musta been tired, Steve, I’m sorry. You know I hate leaving you.”

“I’m fine on my own, Sam,” Steve says, gripping Sam by the bicep. “Don’t want you to stop living for my sake.”

Sam is quiet for a tense moment before he speaks again. “You need to talk about this, Steve,” he murmurs. “I know there are things you still haven’t said, things about before—“

“I say enough,” Steve says, a touch harshly. “It’s the same shit different day, Sammy, PTSD or whatever you wanna call it. I’m just tired. My brain is playing tricks on me.”

“You know you can talk to me whenever, right?” Sam says, voice soft and pained. “I wanna hear it. All of it. We can talk about the before, we can talk about the during. You need to get it out, let it breathe. It’s the only way forward.”

Steve sighs as his eyes slide closed. He feels the phantom weight of a shield in his left hand, and he hates that it’s always there.

“Soon,” he says as he finds Sam’s eyes again. “Just… let’s have dinner first.”

Sam laughs softly, letting the tension break. “Yeah, yeah, you only love me for my cooking. I know it.”

Steve just chuckles and shakes his head as he trudges back up to the building, and his thoughts start to clear of the man. He’s distracted enough by Sam and Natasha’s presence that he almost forgets him.

——

Sam and Natasha head to their room just after midnight, and Steve slowly makes his way to his own, shuffling through the silent Compound as he flicks off lights and checks locks.

He’s passing through the living room when his eyes catch something just outside his line of sight. A splash of white in the darkness of the looming forest.

His head snaps up and there he is. 

He’s in a different spot, closer to the building than he’d been before, and he almost glows in the moonlight. His hospital gown is stained with blood. So much blood.

“FRIDAY,” Steve says as he stumbles toward the door. “FRIDAY! Run a body scan around the perimeter. There’s someone there.”

“The perimeter is clear, Captain. You, Captain Wilson, and Agent Wilson are the only people here.”

There’s an aching moment of silence that buries him as his heart pounds in his chest. The man is close enough, now, that Steve can see how his face is streaked with tears, how his eyes glow as if in bright light. He weeps with an agony that Steve feels in his chest, and his hands are pressing over his body again as if feeling for something that he can’t find there.

His deep caramel hair is matted to his forehead with blood and sweat, messy and curled up. He’s covered in bruises, purple and mean and deep.

He looks so _lost._

Steve sucks in a breath and runs for the door, throwing it open hard enough to dent the wall as his feet pound across the concrete patio toward where the man stands. He’s a hundred yards away, ninety, eighty—.

He’s almost there when the man looks up, wet eyes finding Steve’s with absolute horror etched into every line of his pretty face. He falls back a step, hands shaking, and his face twists with grief and pain.

Blood seeps through the hospital gown that hangs to his knees, rivers of crimson that spread through the thin fabric from wounds Steve can’t see. It runs in rivulets down his legs, stains the grass beneath his feet.

“You’re hurt,” Steve croaks, reaching for him when he’s near enough to touch.

The man gasps, a horrible, wet sound, and he falls back. He doesn’t hit the ground before he disappears.

“What the fuck?” Steve breathes, rushing to where the man had just been standing. He drops to his knees and digs around the grass, desperately pressing around for the blood he’d just seen there, but his hands come up dry. “You were bleeding,” he cries, tearing at the grass when he finds it clean. “You were—you were _bleeding_.”

“Steve!”

Steve ignores his name and stands on shaking legs, sprinting toward the tree line as he tears through the brush in search of the man he’d seen, he’d _seen_ him, he was _here_. There’s nothing to show it. Not a single thing.

“ _Steven Grant_!”

Steve gasps and whirls around, dirt-covered hands in fists at his sides as Sam runs toward him. He tenses, squeezing his eyes shut as he hears the crash of Sam pounding across the forest floor, and he knows this looks awful. 

“Steve, what the fuck?!” Sam shouts, slamming to a halt inches from Steve. His hands cup Steve’s cheeks and turn his head so he has no choice but to look at him. “What the hell is going on out here? FRIDAY called a Code Purple.”

Purple. Emotional distress.

Shame washes over Steve as he sniffs, finding himself close to tears as his eyes dart around the forest. “I—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Natasha is there only a moment later, gun drawn as she picks her way carefully through the brush. “Steve,” she says, relief warring in her tone with deep concern. “What happened?”

Steve can only look at his dearest friends with bewilderment. “He was bleeding,” he says. “He was bleeding, and FRIDAY couldn’t see him.”

Sam goes very still, shoulders squaring as his eyes cloud with something Steve can’t name.

“Let’s get back inside,” Natasha murmurs, taking Steve’s hand in her own as she tugs him back out onto the soft grass.

Sam is beside him again in only a moment, hand clasping Steve’s tight as they lead him home.

His heart aches in his chest as he lets himself be pulled along, and his eyes catch on the spot that had only moments ago been soaked in blood. He sees nothing now but the ripped grass scattered over the top. Dry and green and glowing in the moonlight.

Sam gentles Steve into the couch in the living room, pressed fully against his side, and Natasha settles herself in his lap. It’s like this, sometimes, when the nights are bad. Sam’s warmth at his side, Natasha’s weight against his chest. They’re his comfort. Sam thinks he needs better coping skills, skills he can use on his own, but nothing works as well as being blanketed by two warm bodies.

“What happened?” Natasha murmurs, cheek pressed to his shoulder. 

Steve sighs as the adrenaline bleeds out of his body. His head drops back against the couch and he closes his eyes, sagging under Natasha’s weight. “I saw him.”

“Who?” Sam asks.

“I…” Steve says softly, brow furrowing as he pictures him in his head. “I don’t know. The same man. But he was different.”

“Different how?” Natasha asks, fingers curling in his t-shirt. He knows how gentle they’re being with him, how careful. He doesn’t like how it makes him feel.

“Hospital gown. Bleeding,” he says, voice tight. “Before, it was clean, today… blood.”

“What else?” Sam asks gently, winding an arm around Steve’s shoulders. 

Steve takes a shuddering breath, heavy eyes flicking back out to the empty yard. “He was crying, Sam, it was awful. He looked terrified. And lost. So lost.”

And he’s suddenly exhausted, sniffling a little as he sinks into the couch cushions. He can’t keep his eyes open. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Don’t you dare,” Natasha says, voice sharp but no less loving. “We’ll figure this out, Rogers, we just need to think it through. You need better sleep, I’m sure of it.” She sighs, and her tender hand cups his neck. “Would it be easier if you weren’t alone?”

Steve’s face twists with grief. “Don’t,” he croaks. “You and Sam need your own space, Tasha, I’m fine. I’ll listen to my tapes, I’ll breathe slow, I’ll count down from a thousand if I have to. Go back to bed.”

He shifts until they’re easing away from him, and he heads off down the hall to the sleeping quarters. He knows they’re right behind him, but he doesn’t run. He’d never run from them.

“She’s just saying we’re here for you, Steve,” Sam says gently as Steve shoves through his bedroom door. The lights flick on and Steve is caught standing in the middle of his room staring at a messy bed. It taunts him.

“I know you are,” Steve murmurs as he tears his eyes from the pile of blankets to look at Sam. “I know. I appreciate it. But there’s nothing to be done, Sam, I just sleep like shit. It’s what I get for—“

Sam’s eyes go hard in a half a second and Steve shuts up. “Don’t finish that sentence. I never want to hear it again.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, eyes dropping to the floor at Sam’s feet.

“Don’t apologize either, Steve,” Natasha murmurs, coming to stand beside Sam. Her eyes flick to the bed and find Steve’s again. “We all have demons. We’re still chasing yours away. That’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I hate it,” Steve says, so soft he almost can’t hear himself. 

But Sam hears him. He closes the distance between himself and Steve in a couple long strides, pulling Steve against his chest. “I love you, old man. You’re gonna lay down, and Tash is gonna lay with you, and I’m gonna take first watch. Got it?”

Steve grits his teeth and groans, squeezing his eyes shut as his memory recalls a muddy campsite, canvas tents, a small fire, the weight of a gun in his hand. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Got it.”

“Good,” Sam says, letting him go and giving him a gentle push. “Pajamas on, pick your blankets, settle in. You’re sleeping tonight, so help me God.”

Steve cracks a hesitant smile, wry and tired, and he shuffles off to get changed. 

He’s almost asleep an hour later, half-covered by Natasha’s comforting weight as Sam keeps watch in the corner, and his sleep-heavy eyes flick to the window beside the bed. The curtains are drawn, but through the gap he can see the place the man had been standing. 

He swears he can see the imprint of feet in the soft grass, but he’s asleep before he can think about it too much harder.

——

He wakes under Sam, smothered by the bulk of him as Natasha laughs quietly in the corner of the room. She watches with a deep amusement as Steve shoves at Sam to free himself, grumbling when he remains dead weight, fully asleep.

“You got a lot of hours in today, Steve,” Natasha says quietly, still smirking as he finally extricates himself from Sam’s grip. He throws his legs over the side of the bed to rub blearily at his face.

Steve sighs, squinting at the window where sunlight is doing its level best to burn through the curtains. “Time is it?” he says, voice still thick with sleep.

“Nearly nine.”

He hums, nodding his head as his eyes slide shut. “Not bad.”

Natasha is quiet for a minute, and he looks up to see her considering him carefully. “How many while we were gone, Steve?” He appreciates that she’s asking him and not FRIDAY, but he’d rather not say at all. 

“A night?” he asks, wishing he could dodge the question. He can’t. He never can. “Not enough.”

“What’s not enough?” she asks, brows raised.

Steve sighs, a rough exhalation that rolls into a groan. “Four, maybe five.”

“Mmhm,” Natasha hums, unfolding herself from her chair. “Do we need to take you to the city?”

“Please, God, don’t make me go to the city,” he says through his teeth. “They say the same shit every time. PTSD. Meds won’t work. Breathing exercises. Therapy.”

“At the very least Bruce will want to see you.”

Steve nods, relaxing a fraction. “I can see Banner. I’ll talk to him. No one else. I’m tired of it.”

Natasha is quiet again, and he knows she isn’t satisfied. But he also knows she won’t push him. 

“Make me breakfast,” she finally says, giving Steve a soft smile. 

He smiles back, relieved to be done with it, and he does. Sam emerges from his deep slumber a half hour later just as Steve is plating bacon and eggs, like he’s got a sixth sense for food. 

And it’s better, after that. Sam and Natasha fill him in on their mission, they have lunch, they watch a few movies, they have dinner. Steve makes them sleep in their own room, and they only concede on the condition that FRIDAY has authority to wake them if she senses Steve in any distress. 

He agrees, and they part ways, and he lays awake for a couple hours before blessed sleep finally starts to drag him under. He feels a pair of silver eyes on him the whole while, and they haunt him as he drifts off.

——

“Cleaning up the guest room today, Steve, might need help,” Sam says, moving fluidly around the kitchen as he prepares lunch.

Steve looks up from his sketchbook, pencil stilling over a drawing of Sam cooking stir fry. He nods and goes back to sketching. “Why? We don’t usually do that unless Wanda and Pietro are…”

He frowns and looks back up. Sam is still slicing vegetables with a carefully neutral expression, avoiding Steve’s eyes. It’s the avoiding that gives him away.

“You didn’t.”

Sam shrugs one shoulder and continues to cut. “I might have.”

“Sam,” Steve says, a little too sharply. “She’s retiring, we all know she is. They both earned that. They’re _kids_.”

Sam sighs and throws handfuls of peppers and onion into a frying pan. It sizzles and pops as he gives it a stir. “They’ll be home in two weeks, once they finish some stuff up. She says they’re happy to come back. Miss us, anyway.”

Steve groans, frustrated, and snaps his sketchbook shut. “I don’t need all hands on deck for this one, Sam. My mind played tricks on me two times. Two.”

Sam finally meets his eyes, and his brows raise. “That's a lie. Isn’t it?”

There’s a beat of silence, and Steve shrinks a little as his eyes track Sam’s careful movements at the stove. “It’s not a lie, I only saw him the twice—“

“You had the Compound on alert, and then lockdown. You ran outside _three times_ looking for him. And you barely slept.” Sam meets his eyes again and there’s a sadness there that Steve feels responsible for. “This can’t continue like this, Steve, you’re gonna crash and burn.”

Steve sighs and leans his elbows on the counter. “I can’t do the docs again, Sam, I can’t do it.”

“You need to talk to _someone_ , since you won’t talk to me. You liked that woman in the city, I think you should go again.”

Steve’s eyes flick out to the yard as he thinks it over. The therapist SHIELD had him seeing was kind and patient, sure, but there was a fundamental lack of understanding that Steve couldn’t hardly tolerate. “Need someone with similar life experiences or it doesn’t work for me,” he says softly. 

The skies have cleared since the storm, and it’s such a pretty blue that Steve wants his paints, aches to get down exactly how the clouds look floating high in the sky. The sun is bright and yellow, more cheerful than his soul feels at the moment, like it’s talking to him, like it’s telling him to relax.

He sees a flash of emerald green that doesn’t quite match the foliage and his eyes snap to the source.

_He's_ there again, and his tear-filled eyes are watching Steve carefully. He’s in a pretty green sweater that hangs loose around his slight body, and his mop of brown hair is curled and fluffy and rustling in the breeze. He looks lovely, almost delicate as he stands dwarfed by the trees.

But his eyes… they haunt Steve in a way he can’t shake. He wants to wipe away all the pain he sees in them. He wants to see this man smile. He bets it’s stunning.

Steve’s head clears, and he sucks in a breath and schools his features, heart hammering in his chest. 

“I know how that is, man, you know I do,” Sam says, oblivious. “Give it another shot, for your own sake. You can’t keep going like this. They’ll retire you for it.”

Steve nods, eyes on the man in the woods. “Mmhm.”

He sees Sam look up out of the corner of his eye. “Whatcha lookin’ at there, Steve?” he asks gently, hands stilling where they’re stirring the vegetables.

“Nothing,” Steve murmurs, tearing his eyes away from the man and the tears running in tracks down his reddened cheeks. “’S pretty out.”

Sam sighs and gives him a soft smile. “It is. We should go for a run. Maybe it’ll tire you out.”

“You know it won’t.”

Sam shrugs. “We can try.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, doing his best to smile back. “We can try.”

——

“Hallucinations can come from sleep deprivation,” Sam says that night, sitting across from Steve at the table with Natasha. They’re looking at him with so much concern it hurts. “A few hours a night isn’t near enough. I think we can try more intense meditation before bed, better exercises. But...” 

Natasha sighs and leans on her elbows on the table. “We’re buddying up for now, Steve,” she says gently. “It’s not good for you. Until we have better options, we need you to sleep, however we can make it happen. Sam and I will bunk with you for the time being. You need _sleep_.”

Steve closes his eyes and tries to regulate his breathing. “I appreciate the concern, guys,” he says slowly, keeping his voice carefully level. “But I think this is too much.” His eyes open and find Sam’s. “It’s too much.”

“I don’t care,” Sam says, more harsh than he ever is. “You’re hallucinating. It can’t get worse.”

Steve thinks of the man and his _eyes_ watching him from the trees. The hurt he feels when he sees him. The _otherness_ of it, the wrongness.

It’s only this that has him giving in. “Alright,” he murmurs. “We bunk.”

——

They take shifts that night, Sam and Natasha, and Steve is so tired he can’t help but be miserable about it. He falls asleep with Natasha’s head pillowed on his chest and Sam's watchful eyes on him from the corner, and he wants to cry with it, with how much he needs it when he doesn’t want to.

This is how it was… before. Always someone on watch, someone sitting in front of the fire listening for danger. Even five years thawed, Steve has a hard time sleeping on his own, has a hard time with the silence that suffocates.

It’s painfully easier when he feels Sam’s eyes on him as he falls asleep, shield propped against his chair. Steve feels so much safer. It lets his heart slow and his brain turn off.

He gets almost eight hours that night. He wakes up with a clearer head and a guilty conscience. 

The day is uneventful. Companionship, keeping himself busy, training, reading. Sam cooks, and Natasha picks movies, and they play cards. It’s life as usual, something soft that Steve is finally starting to get used to after nearly a year of it. 

Steve doesn’t see the man at all that day. Not a glimpse. There’s something about it that nags at him, something that has him watching the trees more often than he’d like to. The unanswered questions gnaw at him. He feels like he’s losing his mind.

He keeps it to himself. Best to not concern Natasha or Sam. He doesn’t like what would happen if they knew how much he thinks of the man in the woods.

——

It’s mid afternoon on the second day and he’s out for a run, just doing laps around the vast Compound until he’s worn out. His muscles are starting to ache, and he knows he might be lucky enough for a nap as he makes his way back to the living quarters. 

He sees a flash of red and his feet slam to a stop. 

The man is there again, tears in his eyes as he watches carefully from the trees.

Steve’s heart stutters hard with fear and something that feels like a strange relief, but he blinks and the man is gone. He shakes his head and keeps moving forward, much more slowly. 

The next day, he’s there again, walking quietly through the forest as his light eyes flick to the Compound and back over and over. It’s almost like he wants to be closer, but Steve can see the fear in his eyes. 

He doesn’t tell Sam or Natasha. Not now, not the next five times. 

Each time, the man is wearing something different. A blue sweater and jeans. A trim black suit with a green tie. Running shorts and a loose tank top. And that hospital gown, blood-free or bloodied.

Steve doesn’t understand it. He hates it, but he looks for the man anyway. He comes to expect him, eyes falling to the woods again and again as he waits to see him. It’s always brief, now, a few heavy seconds and he’s gone. Each time he looks less sad, but somehow more lost. 

Steve wants to go to him, wants to find a way to reassure him. There’s something deeply heartbreaking about the way the man’s pink lips are always down-turned, the way his eyes shine with tears unshed. 

Every time the man appears, Steve wants to run to him, scoop him up. He’s smaller than Steve is, a few inches shorter, slight of build. He looks soft, looks like he’d be so easy to pick up and hold close.

But when he appears, Steve does nothing, dreading the looks he’d get from Sam and Natasha. 

It’s the only secret he’s ever really kept from them, but he has to do it. Has to pretend like he isn’t followed everywhere he goes, like he can’t feel eyes on him the whole time he’s awake, like he doesn’t want to run to the man every time he appears.

It’s his only secret.

——

Those alluring eyes are watching him again. So pale in the moonlight they almost glow, reflecting like silver coins. Steve finds himself drawn out into the woods, feet carrying him across the cool lawn without his conscious thought. It’s a long walk to the tree line, long enough that he knows he should turn back, but he can’t. God, he _can’t_.

“Who are you?” he asks of the man standing under an oak that’s bigger around than he is. “Why are you here?”

The man says nothing, but his pouting lips part like he wants to speak. Steve holds his breath and waits to hear it, he wants to hear him so badly his ears are ringing. But nothing comes out.

The man sighs, and those lips tip up in an almost-smile. It’s stunning, and it takes Steve’s breath away.

“Come inside with me,” he murmurs, holding out his hand. He shakes there under the trees, burning with anticipation. 

The man steps closer, and he reaches out with a steady hand. The tips of his fingers are so close, so close it isn’t _fair_ —.

His face twists with horror as he suddenly falls back, and it’s like he moves in slow motion. Those eyes are wide and wet, imploring, and Steve rushes forward, arms outstretched as he tries to catch the ghost who just won’t _leave_ him.

Steve is too slow. Too far away. The man continues to fall, and he almost hits the ground, Steve watches with a clawing grief for the impact, but….

Steve’s eyes snap open and he heaves a painful gasp, shooting up in bed as he sweats and chokes. His chest is tight, he can’t breathe. He has a moment of panic; it feels like an asthma attack. He presses hard at his chest, trying to take slow, measured breaths—.

“Steve,” Natasha says, low voice cutting through the static in his brain. “ _Steve_.”

He comes into full awareness to find her right in front of him, clutching his face in her delicate hands as she watches him with a pained expression.

“Wake up, solnyshko,” she says gently. “You’re home. You’re home, and you’re safe.”

A shuddering sigh leaves him as he sags where he sits, eyes sliding shut. It’s not a nightmare like he usually has.

He wants so badly to tell Natasha about the man, the way he smiled, the way he reached for Steve… but he knows better.

“I’m safe,” he breathes, over and over like it’ll make it feel more true. “I’m safe. I’m home.”

Natasha nods, rust red hair brushing her shoulders. “You are. You’re at the Compound. Sam is on his way back. You’re with us.”

Steve’s heart finally slows, all the fight leaving his body at once. “Thank you,” he sighs. His eyes are welling up with tears, and he hates this, the vulnerability that comes when the moon is high and his room is mostly dark. He wishes so much that it wasn’t this way. He wishes they didn’t see him like this.

“You’re thinking very loudly, Steve,” Natasha murmurs, patting his cheek gently. “Get out of your head for a minute. Let’s watch something.” She doesn’t move from where she sits nearly in his lap, perceptive eyes flicking around his face as she reads him like a book.

But finally she sighs and gets out of bed to grab the remote. The TV blinks to life and she wordlessly flips through the menus until one of his favorite shows is up. Sam is back before the title credits are even finished.

“You’re up,” he says as he shuts the door and locks it. “Nightmare?”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. “Nightmare.” He thinks of the man in the woods and shivers.

Sam nods and sighs, taking his seat in the chair across the room. “You wanna try some breathing?”

“Sure,” Steve says as he shrugs. He knows it won’t work, but it’ll make Sam feel better if he tries. So he does. Deep in, hold for five, slow out. One after another until his head feels light with it.

It helps him feel tired again, at least, and he falls asleep as the TV flashes gently in the dark room, canned laughter echoing in the still that engulfs him. 

As always lately, he falls asleep with a pair of melancholy eyes watching him.

——

Steve catches him in his peripheral vision one day as he’s drawing, and something possesses him. He finds his pencil moving fluidly across the page as his eyes look to him again and again. Sharp face, round eyes so full of sorrow, soft hair curling just so atop his head. It’s another sweater today, navy blue like Steve’s uniform, and it makes his heart kick.

He’s just got the slim lines of his body down when he goes to look up and he’s gone.

Steve's breath catches in his chest and he looks down to see his perfect likeness there in his sketchbook. He looks at it for what feels like an eternity before he’s tearing it out and folding it up. He shoves it in his pocket and hurries off to his room.

It feels like it weighs a hundred pounds when he pulls it out to look at it again.

Steve wonders briefly what the man’s voice sounds like. What he might have to say. He finds himself craving it, and as soon as he realizes that he stuffs the drawing under his mattress with shame sitting on his chest.

He stares at where he’s hidden it and tries to steady his breathing. They can’t know. The others can’t know. He’s got an appointment with the therapist in a week, and he knows he’s just got to last until then.

But the whole thing feels like a descent into madness.

——

Another day passes like this before he’s hit with the worst hallucination of them all. 

It’s nearly bedtime and everyone is shuffling around the Compound getting ready to settle in, and Steve decides he wants fresh air for a minute before he heads back to his room to join them. He’s outside taking slow, purposeful breaths when he sees him again. 

He isn’t surprised, not anymore, not until the man starts moving toward him. 

“Help,” the man says, stopping only a few yards from him. His voice is low and breathless, and Steve’s heart twists to hear it.

He’s stunned silent, gaping as his eyes rake over the man. He’s in his hospital gown again, clean this time, and his bare feet crush the grass as he stands before Steve.

His eyes are pleading, and it makes Steve hurt. They’re such a pretty blue-silver, like newly minted dimes. “You aren’t real,” Steve says. “There’s nothing to help.”

“Real,” the man cries softly, like it exhausts him to say it. “ _Real._ ”

Steve frowns, shaking his head. “Real?”

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY says, and this time the man doesn’t run, and he doesn’t disappear, just watches Steve with a cautious patience. “I’m sensing another presence. Barely there. Human.”

Steve gasps and falls back a step. “Code Red,” he croaks, reaching for the man. 

He flickers out of existence, and Steve chokes on a wounded sound. “No!” he roars, eyes scanning the vast yard, desperate to see him again. 

Unlike all the times before, he’s back in seconds. “Lost. _Help_ ,” he says frantically.

Sam bursts through the back door, shield in hand, and Steve flinches at the noise. “Steve, what’s wro—“ He cuts himself off still several paces away, and Steve can hear him gasp as the shield thunks against the concrete. “What the fuck?” 

The man watches with sad eyes as Steve sobs once, sudden and painful. “You’re real,” he cries. “You're here.” 

The man says nothing, lips moving like his words have been stolen.

“ _Steve_ ,” Sam says, just as Natasha comes through. 

“Oh my God,” she says, voice shaking more than it ever is. “It’s him, isn’t it.”

“Yes,” Steve says, tears streaming down his face. He wants to be relieved, but the grief on the man’s face steals it away. “What’s your name?”

“Bucky,” the man says gently, reaching for Steve, barely a few feet away, the closest he’s ever been.

“I’m Steve,” Steve says, lifting his hand to brush his knuckles over Bucky’s sharp cheekbone like he’s been aching to since that first moment. 

Bucky sighs and leans in like he wants the touch. “Steve,” he says, looking the most at peace that he’s ever seen him. “Than—“

He’s gone again before Steve’s fingers make contact. 

“Oh, Steve,” Natasha says miserably. “He’s real.”

——

They don’t see him for almost twenty-four hours, and they spend that time doing as much research as they can. Ghosts, spirits, specters. They’ve seen aliens and gods and monsters from Hell, he could be anything. But nothing is a good enough answer for any of them, and Steve is more desperate by the hour. 

“Maybe he died,” he says as he pores over yet more notes on spirits and apparitions. It feels ridiculous and it makes his heart hurt, but it’s the closest thing he can accept about Bucky. 

“We can’t know for sure,” Natasha says. “It’s not much to go off of.”

Sam types away at his laptop, jotting down a few notes here and there. “We can run checks on area hospitals, put his name through and see if anyone with that name has passed recently.”

“He’s always here,” Steve murmurs, brow furrowing. “He’s here like it means something. But... it’s always been the Compound. For decades. The clothes he wears, he’s from _now_. He’s from this time.”

“We have to wait,” Sam says. “See if he comes again. Ask him as much as we can.”

Steve hates it, the waiting. He wanders aimlessly around the Compound for the next day, barely sleeping as he keeps his watchful eyes on the trees. He feels the others watching him carefully all the while, and he feels his chest tighten with it. 

He finds himself missing him. It makes no sense. He’s an unknown, a ghost. But there’s a hole in Steve’s heart that aches with loss. 

_Bucky_.

——

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY says. It’s dark when Steve’s eyes snap open, and the clock says four in the morning. 

“Where?” he asks as he leaps out of bed. He’s off down the hall in seconds, feet carrying him to the yard. 

“The woods. He’s on his way to the patio.”

Steve sprints across the Compound, throwing the lock on the back door and shoving through. 

And there he is, beautiful as ever. He has a determined look in his eye, and it’s stunning. He’s in that hospital gown again, so stark in the yard that’s swallowed by trees. The purple of deep bruises spreads across his shoulders and disappears down his chest. His cheek is split, and there’s blood darkening his hair.

“Bucky,” he says as he comes close. He’s still too far for Steve’s liking and his voice isn’t very loud, and it’s breathless. “Albany?” 

Steve’s in front of him in moments, reaching for him before he can stop himself. His hands brush the soft skin of Bucky’s bare arms, and he’s chilled through under his fingertips. He frowns, eyes raking over his body. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Albany. Are you hurt?”

Bucky nods his head, tipping forward until he’s leaning against Steve’s chest. He only comes up to Steve’s jaw, and Steve feels the soft brush of his cold nose over the hot skin of his throat. He’s so solid, and Steve sucks in a breath as his arms come up to wrap gently around his back. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how much time we have before…” He trails off, stabbed with hurt. 

“Gone,” Bucky finishes, and Steve groans. 

“Does talking hurt?” Steve asks. “How much can you say?”

“Tired,” Bucky breathes. He’s crying against Steve, shaking like he’s freezing cold. And he _feels_ cold, like ice against Steve’s bare skin. Steve doesn’t like what it means. 

“I’ll find you,” he says fiercely. “I’ll find you.”

“Please,” Bucky weeps. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and tips his head back to meet Steve’s eyes. He seems to gather some strength before he says, “can make myself—come here. Hard. Very hard.”

“Why here?” Steve asks desperately. “Why me? Where are you?”

“Albany. Accident. Dead. This place… favorite.”

“Favorite?” Steve asks, trying to understand what Bucky is saying, trying to put together as many pieces as he can before he’s gone again.

“Other places,” Bucky breathes, clinging to Steve like he hopes it’ll keep him here. “Exhausted.”

Steve closes his eyes, brow furrowing as he clutches Bucky close. “Tell me as much as you can, Bucky, so I can help you.”

“Can’t,” Bucky whispers. “Can’t stay.”

Panic lances through Steve’s heart as he grips Bucky tight enough that it’s got to hurt. “Don’t go,” he croaks. “Stay here. Let me fix this.”

“Can’t,” Bucky says, so quietly that even Steve almost can’t hear him. “So tired.” He pulls himself from Steve’s arms and backs away, eyes downturned as tears stream down his cheeks. 

He flickers once, twice, and as his guilty eyes finally find Steve’s again, he’s gone.

Steve sits himself down in the cool grass and he waits.

And he waits, and he waits.

——

Nearly one in the morning the next night, FRIDAY wakes Steve again.

“Patio, Captain, he’s waiting for you.”

Steve is out the door before the words have even fully left her.

The moon is a sliver tonight, and it throws the forest into a crushing blackness that makes him feel so small in a way he almost never does. The trees look monstrous like this, looming, reaching. The patio lights flick on, and there Bucky is waiting like a specter.

He’s watching the back door with a careful smile on his face, and Steve wants so much to cling to him. “Hey,” he breathes, only just loud enough for Steve’s enhanced ears to hear over the summer breeze that ruffles his hair.

He looks like he belongs here, tonight, standing in the yard in a hoodie and sweatpants. Steve’s heart says so, loudly and with a fury. He belongs. _He belongs_. Steve has to take a deep breath just to get his lungs moving again. 

“Bucky,” he sighs, staggering forward like he’s being pulled by a red thread. “How are you?”

“Tired,” Bucky says. He sits himself down right there, cross-legged on the concrete, and Steve joins him.

They’re shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching, but Steve can feel the sucking chill rolling off of Bucky in waves. It makes his stomach turn, makes him want to wrap Bucky up and chase the cold away.

He lifts his arm, a silent invitation, and Bucky ducks in close and presses himself into Steve’s side with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers. Steve can hear shame in his voice, real pain, and he isn’t sure exactly what Bucky is sorry for but he wants to make it go away.

“Don’t be sorry, Bucky,” he says as gently as he can. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” Bucky murmurs, turning away. His arms come up to wrap around himself, knees drawn to his chest. He looks so _young_ like this.

Steve frowns, pulling Bucky closer even as he tries to hide. “What do you mean?”

Bucky is quiet for a long minute, and he goes more rigid with each passing second. He sniffles, and Steve leans away enough to see a tear roll down his pinked cheek. “Accident.”

Steve’s breath catches, and he doesn’t like where he feels this going. “What kind of accident?”

He watches Bucky’s face twist with grief, and tears flow freely. Those silver eyes find his, and Bucky whines softly, looking so guilty Steve feels it in his chest. “Not an accident.”

“Not…” Steve says, breathless as his brain flicks through possibility after possibility. “Not an accident.”

“Despair.” He folds in on himself, leaning away from Steve’s grasping hands.

And it clicks in Steve’s head what Bucky is trying to say. What he doesn’t want to say. There was no accident, there was a choice. The idea of this beautiful man making that choice has Steve squeezing his eyes shut hard as thorn-studded vines of protective fury spread through his body until he’s consumed by them. 

“Come here,” he says, voice rough with the emotion threatening to sink him. “Please come here.”

He holds his arms open and Bucky hesitates for a heavy moment before he’s tucking himself against Steve’s chest, ice cold but so soft Steve could cry.

“It’s okay,” Steve whispers as he holds him tight. “It’s okay, now. I have you. We’ll figure this out.”

“Dead,” Bucky croaks, voice louder than it has been ever. “Gone.”

“No,” Steve says miserably. “I refuse to believe that. I’m holding you, aren’t I? You’re here. You’re with me. I’ll make sure you stay, I’ll make it better. I swear it.”

Bucky huffs a wet laugh and sinks deeper into Steve’s side. “Thank you,” he says, but Steve knows he doesn’t believe him.

“I mean it,” Steve breathes. “I’m…” He swallows hard and rests his chin on Bucky’s head, eyes on the crescent moon that creeps higher and higher. “I’m glad to have met you.”

A surprisingly strong arm comes up to wrap around Steve’s waist, and then Bucky is clinging to Steve like he’s a tether. “I’m glad, t—.”

The silence that follows is suffocating, and Steve’s arm hovers in mid-air for a few agonizing seconds before he drops it, sniffling as he looks around the yard. He lets the night drown him for a long time before he goes back inside.

He knows he won’t see Bucky again tonight, but hopefully he will tomorrow. It’s all he wants, anymore.

——

“Sam,” Steve says carefully the next morning. “He talked more.”

Sam looks up from his breakfast, fork halfway to his mouth for a second before he sets it down. “What did he say?”

“I think…” Steve says quietly, frowning as he watches Sam’s face carefully. “I think it was a suicide.”

Sam’s brows shoot up and he sits back heavily, fork clattering against his plate. “Jesus,” he murmurs. “He tell you that?”

“Not in those words, but I can put it together.”

Sam sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “We need to know more, Steve… we need a full name. Something we can look into. We need to find him. For his sake… and for yours.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, picking up his own fork. “We do.”

——

Bucky is back that night, earlier than he usually is. The sun is just barely gone for the night, and the red of it is burning out into a deep navy that’s speckled with stars. Steve wants to paint the way the dying light looks in Bucky’s eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asks as he sits beside him. “So I can find you.”

Bucky half-smiles through the tears that are ever-present, now. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“So that’s where Bucky comes from, huh? Good name. Strong name,” Steve says, a light tease that he hopes will draw a laugh out of the man sitting so sad beside him.

It works, and the melody of Bucky’s soft laughter is the sweetest thing he’s ever heard. “Terrible.”

“Handsome,” Steve says before he thinks. His eyes go wide and he turns away, focusing on the way the moon is fading out to nothing as the month grows long. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, squeezing his fidgeting hands together.

“Know you are,” Bucky murmurs. Steve’s head snaps to look at him, and Bucky is smirking. And God, he wants to see that smirk for the rest of his life.

“Stop,” he says as a smile creeps up his cheeks. “You don’t mean that.”

Bucky shrugs as the smile slides away. “I do.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes. His words escape him, and he just sits staring dumbly into the depths of Bucky’s shining eyes.

“Don’t find me,” Bucky murmurs, face hardening into something serious. “Keep me here.”

“You deserve better than this, Buck,” Steve whispers. “You deserve so much better.”

“Favorite place,” Bucky says simply. “I’ll stay.” 

His slender hand lifts, and Steve leans in to the touch he knows he’ll feel over his cheek. He wants it, more than anything, and his heart kicks as he waits. His eyes slide closed, and his lips part as his breathing picks up.

The moment grows long, and there’s no soft touch. There’s no smiling voice.

He’s gone.

Steve doesn’t open his eyes for a long time.

——

His exhaustive searches turn up nothing. It’s like James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t exist. But he feels him, he knows he’s real. He knows it has to be true. The others see Bucky, too, they believe him, and they hunt right along with Steve until they’re all tired and miserable with it. 

He seems to come late in the night more often than any other time, so Steve waits for him. It’s every day, now, each time longer than the last, and his words come more and more.

Steve’s sitting with him under the new moon one night, silence hanging heavy between them, and Bucky has been with him for nearly thirty minutes.

“It’s something… I can do,” he says slowly, like he has to be careful. “Think hard enough, then here.” He sighs as he tips his head against Steve's shoulder. “Thank you. Not afraid anymore.”

“I’m glad,” Steve says softly. “I don’t want you to be afraid. I just want to figure this out. I want you to be alive.”

Bucky sniffles and Steve feels him shrug one shoulder. “Don’t know if I will be. This might be it.”

His words make Steve _hurt_ , and the vines in him spread until he’s choking. “It can’t be it. I want you here.”

There’s a soft huff of a laugh. “Don’t know me.”

“But I _want_ to,” Steve says, voice tight. “Tell me.”

Bucky is quiet for a beat, and Steve fears he’s worn out. But his low voice picks up, so soft that it’s almost carried away by the late summer breeze. “Author. Romance novels,” he says, and Steve can hear a smile in his voice.

He pulls away enough to see it for himself, and he’s stunned by the beauty of it. “Romance novels,” he repeats, smiling despite himself. “That’s cute.”

Bucky laughs a full laugh, then, and it’s so bright and clear that Steve’s breath hitches. “Fun. Love it.” His smile softens into something wry and fond. “Famous, I guess.”

There’s a question clawing at Steve, one that he’s been dying to ask for so long. “Do you… do you have someone? Someone who inspires you?”

“You,” Bucky says sadly. “Wish I could write you.”

A rush of breath leaves Steve, and he wraps an arm around Bucky and tugs him close. “Wish I could read it. Hell of a story.”

Bucky hums, leaning into him. “Sister,” he says, and Steve can hear the melancholy in his voice. “Becca. Miss her.”

“What’s she like?” Steve asks, squeezing Bucky close.

He huffs another laugh. “Spitfire. Troublemaker.”

Steve chuckles, trying to imagine what Bucky’s sister might be like. Maybe she has his brown hair, or his silver eyes. His smile. His face falls when he realizes she probably misses him, and his head goes fuzzy with the pain of it, the guilt.

The soft flash of fireflies floats over the yard, and Steve can hear the croaking of bullfrogs as the night grows long. He wants to live in this moment for the rest of his life, wants to feel it grip him until he’s old and can’t carry on anymore.

“Tired,” Bucky says as the new moon is high in the sky. “Leave now.”

Steve looks down at him and his heart clenches. He can see it, the exhaustion that must be swallowing Bucky whole. “It’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ll see you again. I’ll be right here waiting.”

Bucky smiles, a soft and careful thing that has his eyes sparkling in the dark. “Waiting,” he breathes.

Steve leans in, drawn to Bucky in a way he can’t begin to understand, but he knows he could. He knows he wants to.

“Come back,” he asks so softly as his nose brushes over Bucky’s cold cheek. “Please.”

He feels the hitch in Bucky’s breath, wants to pull him into his lap, and he very nearly does. His hands go to grip his waist, but they close on nothing.

He's gone, and Steve’s left staring at the place he had occupied for the longest he ever has. 

Something roars in him, and his eyes shut tight. He doesn’t know how long he can do this, how long he can feel this loss again and again.

But he knows he’ll do it as long as Bucky comes back to him, however long he can have him. Days, weeks, months. A lifetime. There’s a little sliver of his mind that says it’s wrong, that he should stop before this grows too big to kill.

Most of him, though… most of him is screaming that Bucky _belongs_. It’s the same feeling he’s had since that first moment weeks ago. Familiarity. Rightness melded with the otherness to make something that twists at Steve’s heart.

He’ll keep waiting. He has to.

He shakes it all off and stands, knees cracking as he sighs and heads inside.

Sam is there standing vigil like he always is. “Steve…” he says carefully.

“Please don’t,” Steve murmurs. “I know. I already know.”

“We don’t know how this is happening. We don't know how it ends.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sam,” he says as he looks into the sad eyes of his dearest friend. He sees a lot in those eyes, but most of it is pain. “I’ll be here whenever he comes back. No matter how long.”

Sam sighs, holding Steve’s eyes for a long moment before he nods and backs away. “Alright,” he says simply. “I think it's bedtime, Steve. Why don’t you go curl up? I know you’ve been getting more hours. I think… some part of this might be good for you.”

Steve tears his eyes away, lips parting as he tries to find words for Sam, words he might want to hear. He has none. “Bedtime,” he says softly. “You’re right.”

He lays in bed that night with his eyes on the yard, curtains always open now, watching for Bucky to blink into his life. He looks out into the trees, and he feels a careful hope trying to spread.

He chokes it back and rolls over.

——

And then Wanda and Pietro are home.

——

“This man,” Wanda says, accent even more pronounced as she starts to disappear into her own head. “When do you see him?”

“Mostly at night,” Steve replies, standing at the back door as he waits. Wanda has been home for less than a day, but he wants her to see Bucky so badly that it’s killing him. 

“And how does he look?”

“Mostly the same each time, but his clothes change. And sometimes... sometimes he’s hurt. Bruised. Battered. Bleeding. I hate it.”

Wanda hums in thought, fingers curling with red absently as she stands with Steve watching the yard. “I believe he may be from somewhere else.”

Steve tilts his head to look at her. “He’s from here, Wan, he’s from Albany.”

“I don’t mean physically,” she says thoughtfully. “I mean a different here. His own here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know I see other realities sometimes?” she murmurs, eyes still on the forest. “I didn’t ever believe it. I didn’t understand it. Pietro and I decided long ago that it was a strange side effect of my... condition.” She sighs, and her head rests against Steve’s shoulder. “But I think it may be real after all.”

There’s a flicker among the trees, and Steve is running before he’s even conscious of it. 

“Bucky,” he cries, pounding across the lawn until he slides to a stop in front of him. 

Bucky looks even more tired, today. “Steve,” he says, tipping against his chest like he always does. 

“I have someone I need you to meet,” Steve says gently, fingers carding through his soft hair. “She might have an answer.”

Bucky lifts his head and looks over Steve’s shoulder. He knows Wanda is there watching them. 

“Hello,” Wanda says softly. He can hear the gentle patience in her voice, and he can tell she isn’t fazed in the slightest. He appreciates it so much. “I’m Wanda. I may be able to help you.”

Bucky gasps, slipping around Steve to pad slowly through the grass. His yellow sweater hangs loose over his body, stopping at his thighs. He looks soft, and Steve knows he’s cold as ever but he looks so warm. 

“How?” Bucky asks. 

Wanda cocks her head, considering Bucky carefully. “I… see other realities. Do you?”

Bucky holds her eyes, lips parting just so as he considers Wanda’s words. Steve sees understanding dawn on his face. “Maybe,” he breathes. “I can choose.”

Wanda smiles softly. “Is this new?”

“New. Tiresome. Accident, now this.”

“Can you go back to your own reality?” Wanda asks, taking a step closer. “Can you find your body again?”

Bucky frowns, shaking his head. “Can’t. Don’t know how. Dark.”

“I could try to send you there. It may be difficult, but I can try.”

Bucky chokes on a hurt sound, shaking his head as he backs away. “I’m dead. I’m dead I can’t go back _please_ don’t put me back.” It’s the most he’s ever said at once, and Steve aches to hold him.

Wanda holds her hands up in a calming gesture. “I need to see. I can try to look.”

“Look,” Bucky murmurs, frown deepening. He turns and looks at Steve, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Steve’s heart swell. 

Wanda lifts a hand and holds it to Bucky’s temple, and the red of her magic swirls around his head. Steve sees her eyes glow like rubies before she’s shutting them tight in concentration. 

She gasps just as Bucky blinks out of existence. 

Steve’s heart throbs like it’s going to stop. “Wanda,” he says, voice tired. “Bring him back. Please bring him back.”

“I will try,” she says gently. 

Her hands lift again, and her slender fingers curl, and red twists from her hands like smoke. “I see him,” she says as her eyes close and her brow furrows. “But he... he isn’t dead. It’s a coma.”

Steve stops breathing. 

“It’s a coma, Steve. I can... I can pull him here, or I can leave him there.”

“ _No_ ,” he breathes. His chest aches with loss, and he wants to weep as he pictures Bucky’s face. His sharp cheekbones, Cupid’s bow lips, gentle eyes. Shame follows it quickly, bleeding through him until he has to turn away. He has no right to keep Bucky here, not when he can go home.

He has a family. A sister by his bedside, and maybe a mother and father waiting for him to wake. They must have felt immense pain at his loss, and Steve can’t steal Bucky away from them. He has a life there, and Steve doesn’t know enough about it to know he’d be happier here.

Steve thinks of the look in Bucky’s eyes every time he looks at Steve, and he chokes down the hope that burns in him white-hot. He’s attached. He’s too attached, and he never should have allowed it.

“Send him back,” he says softly as he takes a few steps away. “Send him home.”

“It will likely be permanent,” Wanda murmurs, voice pained. “I can give his life back, at the cost of this one.”

“This is no life.”

Wanda sighs. “FRIDAY, please call the others to the porch.”

“Yes, Miss Maximoff.”

Pietro is there only a second later, slipping through the back door to stand behind Wanda, arms around her waist. He bends in close and murmurs something in Sokovian, and Wanda answers him. He looks at Steve with real grief on his face, but he says nothing.

Steve steps up to stand in front of her, hands on her arms. “It’s the way it should be, Wanda. He’s not mine. He was never mine.”

The others are there soon after. “What’s wrong?” Sam asks.

“He’s in a coma in his body, it is a different reality,” Wanda says, eyes on Steve’s. “I am sending him back.”

“Steve,” Sam says, teeth gritted. “Did he ask for that?”

Steve keeps his eyes on Wanda’s. He doesn’t want to see the pity on Sam’s face. “He doesn’t have to, Sam. It’s the right thing to do.”

A tense silence swallows them whole. Steve knows what they’re all thinking. He’s seen how they’ve watched him all these weeks. They know what has grown in him, how he’s changed. They know what he’s losing.

“It is,” Natasha says gently. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

“It’ll be okay,” Pietro murmurs, the first words he’s said since he rushed outside. “Some people… some people are only with us for a little while. Some people aren’t meant to stay. It’s just… how it is.”

Steve knows Pietro is thinking of his parents. He feels guilty for comparing this to what Pietro and Wanda felt with the loss of their mother and father. This shouldn’t feel as painful as it does.

“Yeah,” Steve says softly. “It’s how it is.” He closes his eyes and pictures Bucky again. He knows he’ll hold onto him for a long time, all his life. He was a shining light in Steve’s life that has grown so dull, and he’ll keep him like that forever. He’ll always have these woods, the night, the moon shining in silver eyes. 

“Do it.”

He sees the red of Wanda’s magic through his eyelids for an eternal moment, and then it dims, and silence envelops them all again.

Tears gather in his eyes, and one slips free to roll down his cheek. It cools against his skin in the evening air, and another follows, and then another. A pair of arms wraps around his back, and he tips into Wanda like he can’t stop it.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” she whispers. “But he woke up. I saw it.”

“Good,” he croaks as he lets her hold him. “I’m glad.”

There was no goodbye. He feels robbed. It feels wrong. Something fundamental is missing from his whole being, now, something he’d only just discovered.

An ugly part of him wishes he’d kept Bucky here, dragged him through time and space to keep him all to himself. Damn everyone else.

He just wants _him_.

——

——

Bucky wakes to the rhythmic sound of a gentle beeping, and a soft light glows through his closed eyelids. Exhaustion grips him tight, but he claws up out of it until he can finally, _finally_ blink his eyes open.

He's in a white room, and thick curtains are drawn across vast windows. Tears come to his eyes as reality settles over him like a leaden blanket. He’s in a hospital. He’s alone. And he had had such a good dream….

The stunning height he’d fallen hadn’t been enough. He’s awake.

A door opens, and he tips his head just so to watch a doctor sweep in.

“Mister Barnes,” she says. She's a tall woman, thin, sharp-looking. There’s a half-smile on her face, and she looks relieved. “Good morning.”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. He frowns, squeezing his eyes shut as he fights to choke out the words that are sitting just behind his teeth.

A cool hand takes his own and he looks up.

“Don’t push yourself,” the doctor says gently. “You’ve been asleep for almost two months. It’ll take time. Let’s start slow, shall we?”

_Slow_. Bucky sighs.

He sags back into the propped up bed and closes his eyes again. He wants with everything in him to sleep, he wants to go back to the forest. 

He wants _him_.

——

He spends the next two weeks being poked and prodded, cleaned up, exercised. There’s paperwork, and there’s medication, and there’s bland food. The sunlight pours through the open windows too bright, an assault, and he offers the doctors and nurses a smile when he can.

He still has no words for them, but he finds he hasn’t got much to say, anyway.

How would he explain all the things festering in his heart? Who could he tell about his vivid dreams, the pain he’d felt that was so quickly replaced by a love he thought he would never experience? His sister, rest her soul, would have laughed.

“Seems like you finally lived one of your novels, Buck,” she’d say as her eyes sparkled with mirth. “Couldn’t find a man to love so you dreamed one up yourself.”

Bucky huffs a soft laugh at the image of it, his sister’s cheeks pink from her sweet giggling, the shine of her doe eyes. A year without feels like a lifetime.

He convinces all the therapists that he’s changed, that his… accident made him realize how wrong he was. They still visit him once a day, gauging his mood with worksheets and notepads. He doesn’t need his voice to be believable. He’s good with words, after all.

His parents would be appalled at all the lies he tells. 

——

He isn’t left alone very much in the beginning. Always babysat, talked to, coddled. He isn’t spared much time with his own thoughts.

But he thinks of _him_ sometimes, the man he’d dreamed up, though he tries not to. He can’t get the way the moonlight made his blue eyes _glow_ out of his head. They hadn’t had a lot of time in his dreams, but he thinks that given enough of it he could really have loved him.

If only he hadn’t woken up. What’s there to be awake for, anymore?

He’s snapped back to the present when his door opens for the hundredth time in an hour.

“James,” Doctor Murphy says, smiling that smile that Bucky wants to hate but can’t. “I see you managed some food, that’s good. I think we’ll start transitioning to more home-based care soon. Another few days or so here, and then we can get you settled with at-home nursing. I bet it sounds so good to be in your own home again.”

Bucky gives her a weak smile. _Home_. 

Empty, silent, alone. 

He nods.

Doctor Murphy beams. “Lovely. We have a speech therapist coming to see you in an hour, he’s very good, I hope he can make you feel comfortable as we get you talking again.”

This is where Bucky would thank her, tell her he’s looking forward to talking again, that the muteness of his own voice is jarring. But he has nothing, so he only gives another soft smile.

When he naps later that afternoon, he dreams of nothing.

——

His speech therapist is named David. He’s a kind man, patient and soft-spoken, and he makes Bucky miss his father.

“My name…” he says slowly, trying to stay relaxed as he squeezes the words out. “Name is… Bucky.”

“That’s great, Bucky,” David says, and the smile on his face is so painfully genuine. He’s holding one of Bucky’s hands in both of his own, and they’re warm and soft like he is. “What else can you tell me today? Your voice is even more lovely every time I hear it.”

Bucky huffs a laugh and grins, and the telltale burn of a flush spreads across his cheeks. “Stop,” he croaks. “Flatterer.”

David whoops. “See? Stunning. Tell me more.”

Bucky sighs, though the smile hasn’t left his face. “I live… in Albany. I write… books.”

“You do,” David says. “I’ve read one or two. Can I tell you a secret?”

“Yes,” Bucky says softly like he’s in on it.

David leans in with a lopsided smile. “My husband has the whole collection on our bookshelf. If he knew I get to talk to you every day he’d be incredibly jealous.”

Bucky can’t help but laugh, pleasantly surprised. “All… of them?”

“I think there are seven?” David says, cocking his head. “He adores them.”

Bucky hums, resting his head against the back of his chair as he takes a moment to breathe.

They’re in his home like they have been for the last two weeks, and Bucky is settled into his favorite wingback chair in his den. David has dragged his own up beside him, and mostly he just… talks to him, has him practice words and sounds here and there, and it gets easier every day.

“I like… them, too,” Bucky murmurs, eyes flicking to the bookshelves that sit against the wall across the room. It’s heaped with books, dozens of them, and his sit right in the middle shelf. “They… make me… dream.”

“What do you dream about?” David asks gently, giving Bucky’s hand a squeeze.

“You’ll… laugh,” Bucky says with a wry grin. He meets David’s eyes again and his smile drops a fraction.

David looks like he knows the sadness in Bucky’s soul, like he can see the longing that makes his heart stutter in his chest. “Tell me,” he says.

And Bucky can’t help it, not after weeks of holding it all in his own hands. “I dreamed of a man… while I was asleep.”

“Mm,” David hums. He settles back into his seat and gives Bucky a soft smile. “What was he like?”

“Kind. Handsome,” Bucky says, voice stronger with every syllable. “Blue eyes, like the ocean… so deep I could drown. And… his hair was golden, like a halo… maybe he was an angel.”

David is quiet for a minute, and his gentle eyes roam Bucky’s face before he half-turns to look out the window. “People see all sorts of things when they sleep like you did. Some live long lives, others merely nap. People come out changed, sometimes. They go places far away, and sometimes they don’t really come back.”

“I don’t think… I want to come back,” Bucky admits quietly. He’s stunned at himself for a moment, stunned at his honesty, at voicing the thought that has been simmering low in the back of his head since he’d first opened his eyes to see the place he didn’t want to see.

David turns to look at Bucky again, and his smile is knowing. Bucky doesn’t feel judged. Just understood. 

“All we have is this place,” David says, shrugging one broad shoulder. “We don’t get to choose a life, we just have the one we belong to. You’ll find your place again, Bucky. You’ve got so much heart.”

Tears gather in Bucky's eyes as he squeezes David’s hand. “It was so real,” he breathes. “He held me… in the moonlight… He had friends who cared about me. I met him in the forest… again and again.”

His tears spill over, and he shakes with his silent crying. David holds his hand until he’s tired out, sitting with him in a bittersweet silence. 

He feels no better after his tears are dry.

He only feels more alone.

——

He's laying in bed that night when he finally closes his eyes and lets himself see Steve again in a way he’s been avoiding for weeks. Tonight, Bucky actively thinks of him. He pictures his woods, his home, his handsome face.

He hears Steve's voice, sees the way his peach pink lips curve in a soft smile when he looks at Bucky, feels the weight of his arm around his waist. He’s so warm against Bucky’s side, like a furnace, like he radiates a sunlight with his whole being that heats him through.

With a heavy sigh, Bucky drifts, and as sleep takes him he feels the cool crush of dead leaves under his feet.

His eyes open, and he’s in _his_ woods.

It’s dark like it almost always is when he comes here, moonlight pouring like mercury through the cover of the branches overhead. The breeze that sifts through the trees is chilled, and the leaves are less dense than he’d last seen them. The ground is littered with them, red and orange and brown spreading across the forest floor like water.

He steps carefully through the trees that stand half-bare, and he sees it only a moment later.

_His_ home.

The lights are out in the vast building, and with the moon as high as it is Bucky knows it’s very late. It’s alright, for the moment. He just wants to look.

He thinks of all the time he’s spent in this place, all the dreams he’s had of these trees, this yard, this moon. His heart tightens in his chest as he turns in place, taking it all in like it’ll be the last time. 

It will be. It has to be. 

His feet carry him to the patio, and just as his bare foot hits cold concrete the back door flies open.

“ _Bucky_.”

He jumps and his head snaps up to look at the man standing there in his pajamas. Bucky wants to weep.

He’s just as handsome as ever, rumpled from his bedsheets, dressed in soft pants and a loose t-shirt. He looks cozy.

And he looks sad.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, taking an unsteady step back. He has to get out of this place before he never wants to wake up again. “You are the best thing… my mind…” He takes a deep breath, brow furrowing as he tries to get his words out. Even in his dream he can’t speak, like his tongue is made of lead.

“The best thing my mind… has ever given me,” he finishes, tears streaming down his face. “I wish I didn’t… have to wake up.”

“Bucky,” Steve murmurs as he steps closer, hands up like he wants to pull him in. “Did you pick this place?”

Bucky frowns, squeezing his eyes shut as he tries to think.

_This_ place.

There were… there were other places.

“Oh,” he says dumbly as his eyes open to find Steve’s. “I picked this place.” He stands up straighter as the strength of all of his love burns through him hot and molten. “I picked _you_.”

Steve smiles, and it is the most beautiful thing Bucky has ever seen.

——

——

“Captain Rogers.”

Steve is dragged out of sleep by FRIDAY’s voice. He blinks his heavy eyes and finds himself in a consuming darkness. His curtains are drawn tight; he stopped being able to sleep with them open a week ago. He’d left them open for three. 

“What is it?” he murmurs, voice slurred some as he wakes fully. 

“The yard,” FRIDAY says softly, and there’s something so humanly awed about her tone. “He’s here.”

Steve leaps out of bed, tripping over his blankets in his haste to get outside. The race through the Compound feels eternal, and his heart pounds and pounds as he runs through hallways and vast rooms lit only by the blue glow of the moon. 

“Where?” he cries. “Where is he?”

“The patio. His presence is very strong. The strongest it has ever been.”

Steve’s heart stutters as he finally reaches the back door, throwing it open with too much strength. 

And God, there he is. 

He’s in pajamas much like Steve is, a soft pair of flannel pants, an over-large t-shirt. His hair is so fluffy, and Steve aches to run his hands through it. 

“ _Bucky_.”

Bucky jumps, head snapping up. His shining silver eyes find Steve’s, and there’s something heartbroken buried in their depths. Steve can’t breathe with it. He wants to make that look go away, he never wants to see it on Bucky’s sweet face again. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, voice so soft in the ringing silence of night. “You are the best thing... my mind...” He chokes up, eyes welling with tears. His voice isn’t weak from exhaustion like it usually is. It’s rough like he hasn’t used it in a while. 

When he speaks again, it’s pained. “The best thing my mind... has ever given me. I wish I didn’t... have to wake up.”

Steve’s breath hitches and he realizes then what Bucky is struggling with. He thinks Steve isn’t real, just as Steve had thought Bucky wasn’t. He’s dreaming. “Bucky,” he says as gently as he can. He takes a stumbling step forward, reaching for him. “Did you pick this place?”

He watches confusion twist Bucky’s face as tears stream down his cheeks and his eyes shut tight. A moment stretches long between them, and Steve’s heart swells with relief when Bucky’s face clears of pain. He watches the heartache bleed away from him, watches as he stands straighter. Watches his pretty eyes open with so much hope he can feel it.

“Oh,” Bucky says, as if he’s realized something so obvious. “I picked this place.” He squares his shoulders, and Steve watches light come to his whole being. “I picked _you_.” 

Steve beams. He picked Steve. He picked _Steve_. 

“Bucky,” Steve croaks, feet carrying him forward as he reaches and reaches. “You picked this place.”

Bucky smiles, and it’s the most beautiful and soft thing Steve has ever seen. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I’ll always... pick you.”

Steve takes those last few steps, and then he’s pulling Bucky in, burying his face in a neck so warm with life. He feels a steady pulse against his nose, and Bucky’s hands come up to cling to Steve’s shirt like it’s the only thing keeping him tied to the earth. 

“Steve,” he whispers, voice tight. He stands up on his toes and presses his face to Steve’s throat, and he sighs so deep that Steve can practically taste his relief. “So warm.”

Steve chokes on a strangled laugh. “So are you, sweetheart. I can’t believe it.”

A soft breath huffs over Steve’s collarbone and he shivers with it. Bucky’s lips brush the sensitive skin of Steve’s neck, and Steve wants to scoop him up and bundle him beneath his own ribs. 

“Can I?” Bucky breathes, still tucked into Steve like he wants to live there.

Steve isn’t sure exactly what Bucky is asking for, but he has a hope. He knows, though, that he’ll give this man anything. “Yeah,” he says. “Take it. Take everything. I want you to have it.”

And then Bucky is leaning up closer, close as he can get where they’re still standing on the patio, and his soft lips press to Steve’s so sweetly that Steve stops breathing. The moment freezes, and Steve is dumbstruck by the want that sears him from the inside out. He moans softly and tilts his head to devour Bucky like he’s wanted to for so long. 

Bucky whimpers into it, and it’s so sweet, a quiet utterance of absolute relief. His hands bury in Steve’s hair and tug him close, and he kisses back like he’s wanted this as much as Steve has. 

It’s a mess, this kiss, and it’s a long time coming. Steve wraps his arms low around Bucky’s waist and hefts him up, wanting him as close as he can get. Bucky huffs a little sound of surprise and clings, arms around Steve’s neck, legs around his waist. He weighs so little to Steve, and it makes him want to purr with satisfaction.

Steve draws back with a soft smack of lips, and Bucky’s panting so prettily that he just lets him for a few eternal seconds. “Bucky,” he finally says, and the name drips from his tongue like golden honey. “God. Come inside. Please come inside.”

“I’d love to,” Bucky whispers, brushing his nose over Steve’s cheek. “I’m staying this time. Forever... if you want.”

A sob of pure happiness grinds out of Steve’s chest, and it feels like liberation. “Yeah,” he croaks as he kisses the tears off of Bucky’s skin. “I want it.”

“Thank God,” Bucky says, and Steve can hear his smile. “I don’t know what I’d do... if you didn’t.”

Steve smiles and he presses his words into Bucky’s blood-flushed cheek. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s late. Come lay with me.”

“I will,” Bucky says softly. “Take me there.”

Steve carries him through the winding compound, hardly able to stop himself from pulling him into kiss after kiss. They’re quiet as they pass through, and Steve is grateful that FRIDAY didn’t wake the others. He wants to keep Bucky all to himself tonight. 

He stops at his door, hesitating as nerves flicker to life in his belly. “I...” he murmurs, at a loss. 

Bucky tightens his arms around Steve’s neck and bends in close. They’re almost kissing, the barest brush of lips, and Steve floods with heat. “Show me,” Bucky whispers. “Where you waited for me.”

The room is still dark, but the lights slowly come on as they step through and the door shuts. They stay low, just bright enough to see the way Bucky is beaming, just enough to carry him to the big bed that has felt so empty for the last month, longer, even, than that. 

Steve wastes no more time, laying Bucky down and sliding in beside him. “I’ve missed you,” he breathes, awed that he’s no longer alone. Stunned that he feels Bucky’s warm body under his grasping hands. “I’ve missed you every second.”

Bucky sighs and crawls up to lay above Steve. He looks down with a fond smile on his face. “I’m here,” he says, voice stronger with every word. “I’ll never leave again. I meant it, honey. Best thing... I’ve ever dreamed.”

A wounded cry punches out of Steve’s chest, and he rolls until Bucky is laid out under him, looking so inviting he can’t breathe. “I want...” he croaks. “I want you. _God_ , I want you.”

“Have me,” Bucky says, smile going wide and satisfied. “I’ve been yours… all along.”

And there’s that _familiarity_ again. Hearing those words from Bucky’s mouth settles something deep in Steve’s soul, like a lock is clicking open, like broken parts are snapping back together. 

“ _Mine_ ,” Steve cries, wide eyes raking over Bucky’s face. “All mine.” He leans in close until his nose brushes Bucky’s, and he pants quietly as he squeezes his eyes shut against the strength of the lust gripping him tight. He swallows hard, mind begging for a thousand things at once. 

“Stevie,” Bucky coos as his hands smooth up Steve’s back. His touch makes Steve shiver and cover him fully, lips brushing against his in a barely-there kiss. “I love you.”

Steve sucks in a breath and dives in, swallowing the startled, pleased sound that Bucky makes. His hand finds Bucky’s silky hair, clenching into a fist as he pulls Bucky’s head back to expose the long, sun-kissed column of his throat. 

He growls, struck by the possessive need to mark, to claim. “God, I love you,” he says, voice rough with want. “I love you so much. Never knew I could love like this.”

Bucky whimpers as his hips roll up against Steve’s. “Yeah,” he says, voice breathy, a little higher. “Prove it.”

Steve bends down and sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of Bucky’s neck, purring when Bucky cries out softly. He sucks a dark, stinging mark into his skin, and then another, and another, a perfect line of them that he hopes so much will stay for days. 

“Wanna take you,” he says, voice strained as he pants and paws at Bucky. “Please let me take you.”

Bucky whines and squirms under Steve’s weight. “Yeah,” he breathes as he nods. “Come on. Do it.”

The nightstand drawer gets ripped out in Steve’s haste to reach inside for the bottle of lube tucked away there. His hand shakes as he digs it out; he’s desperate. He wants to be buried in Bucky as far as he can go. Carve out a home for himself and stay there. 

He drops the bottle to the bed by Bucky’s hip and Bucky twitches, anticipation bringing a high flush to his cheeks. The silver of his eyes is swallowed by the ink of his pupils, two perfect shining rings that watch Steve’s every move. His head tips back so he’s looking up at Steve through his long lashes, his kiss-bitten lips are parted as he pants, and Steve never wants anything more than this right here. 

“So pretty,” he purrs, still breathless himself. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, babydoll.” He bends in and eats up all the sweet little sounds Bucky is making, rolling his hips down in a dirty grind.

He can feel the hard line of Bucky’s cock through his pajamas, and he rocks down harder to make sure Bucky can feel his own. He must, because he gasps and throws his head back with a low whine.

“Please,” Bucky cries, so quiet in the night-still of the bedroom. “Please.”

“Anything,” Steve growls. “Anything you ask for. You’ll never want for a thing, Buck, never.” He huffs and ruts down again, and again, chasing the agonizing friction it brings. The muscles of his arms shake as he holds himself up, holding on to the barest thread of control. 

Bucky squirms beautifully, panting and rolling his hips up to meet every hard thrust Steve gives him. “Give it to me,” he says, voice rough. “You know what I want.”

Steve _does_ know what he wants. He wants a love story, he wants forever. He wants to live a life he’s given to so many in his books, books Steve wishes so much he could read. He sees it in Bucky’s eyes, the hope and the promise of a lifetime of _this_.

“Tell me anyway,” Steve murmurs as he starts to peel Bucky’s clothes away. His shirt goes first, revealing his lithe body, the barest softness of his belly, the slope of his ribcage. Freckles dot his abdomen, and Steve wants to follow the line of them with his tongue. So he does.

Bucky whines as Steve tastes him, hands buried in Steve’s hair. “I want _you_ ,” he says, so pretty and breathy. “Since I first saw you. Thought I dreamed you up. Everything I’ve ever wanted.” He huffs when Steve circles his pink nipple with his tongue, hips jerking like he can’t help himself.

“I kept coming back to this place,” he continues, panting softly. “Thought it was Heaven. Thought you were… an angel.”

Steve hiccups a quiet sob as he squeezes his eyes shut against the tears threatening to fall. He trails kisses down Bucky’s belly, sucking another mark just over his hipbone. All the longing in his heart is starting to swallow him up; his mind narrows down to just the feel of Bucky’s warm skin under his tongue, the twitches of his hips as Steve marks him up, the desperate sounds he makes.

He focuses long enough to tug Bucky’s pants down, and he groans when his cock falls free, laying heavy and red over his hip. The tip is glossy, leaking, and Steve needs to taste it. He bends down to lick up the little bead of wet there, and Bucky cries out.

“Steve,” he says through his teeth. His hands that are still in Steve’s hair clench into fists as he bucks up into the contact. “Yeah, _yeah_.”

Steve growls and takes Bucky’s blood-hot cock in his hand, giving him a firm stroke before he swallows him down in one go. He’s a satisfying mouthful, satin soft against Steve’s tongue, and Steve groans when he hits the back of his throat. 

And he knows right then exactly what he wants.

He loops his arms under Bucky’s thighs and holds him tight, rolling smoothly to his back as he drags Bucky on top of him. He’s got his cock swallowed down only a moment later, sighing with satisfaction as Bucky makes a strangled sound.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Bucky breathes, laying over Steve on his elbows. His hips twitch, and Steve knows he’s holding back.

He drags his lips up and off, panting as his fingers clench in the meat of Bucky’s thighs. “Come on,” he says, voice in the gutter. “Take what you want.”

He hears Bucky’s breath stutter, feels the movement of his muscles as his hips roll, so he swallows him down again and waits there.

Bucky’s first thrust is shallow and slow, careful. His hips lift only an inch before they sink back down, and Steve groans as the taste of him smears over his tongue. He nods, fingers squeezing Bucky’s thighs hard as he drags him in deeper.

A wounded sound punches out of Bucky’s chest as he ruts in again, harder, deeper. “Steve,” he cries, moving steadily, now. Every roll of his hips is longer than the last, until he’s fucking so pretty into Steve’s throat.

Steve has never felt something so good in all his life, pinned here by Bucky’s hips, stuffed full of his cock. He swallows, and it drags a hurt sound out of Bucky’s chest so he does it again. His remaining brain cells all scream at him for more, so he pats around for the bottle on the bed and snaps the cap.

Bucky must not have heard it because he flinches when Steve’s slick fingers tease between his cheeks. “Christ,” he says, voice strangled. He’s still fucking into Steve’s mouth, but now he’s pressing back against his seeking fingers, too. “Please,” he begs. “ _Please_.”

Steve nods, keeping his jaw slack as he breathes steadily through his nose. His fingers press in until he finds what he’s looking for; hot skin, fluttering muscle. Bucky sobs above him, rutting in hard, and Steve’s breath is stolen.

The first slide in is slow, a steady drag that melts Bucky like taffy. He groans, long and low, and his thrusts go deep and unhurried. Steve pulls his finger out and presses back in, easy as anything, over and over. Bucky gasps and moves all languid and loose above him. 

Steve feels trapped in this moment. He doesn’t want to leave it. He lets Bucky take and take and he stuffs his finger deep, and then another, and another, until Bucky is whining high in his throat. 

He’s close, Steve knows he is, and Steve is so torn. He lets Bucky slide out of his mouth, gasping for breath, and he presses in deep as he can as he gathers the strength to speak. 

“How many can you give me?” he says through his teeth, three fingers buried to the knuckle. “I want you to come on my cock, baby, but _God_ do I wanna taste you.”

Bucky moans, sagging above Steve. “Probably more than one,” he says, gasping. “Wanna come... on your tongue, Stevie, _please_.”

Steve sucks in a harsh breath and wastes no time, taking Bucky back down to the base. He chokes and swallows hard, and Bucky jerks, sobbing as he fucks into Steve’s throat. 

“Steve,” he cries, voice breaking as he ruts helplessly between Steve’s fingers and his mouth.

“Mmhm,” Steve hums, shoving his fingers in hard and spreading them. He rubs at him as softly as he can, and he knows he’s hit the right spot when Bucky sucks in a deep, startled gasp.

“Stevie, _Stevie_ ,” he pants, chasing the release Steve is so eager to give him. “I’m,” he whines. “ _I_ —.”

With an agonized cry he spills down Steve’s throat, hips stuttering as his cock throbs against Steve’s tongue. Steve moans and laps at him as he shivers and quakes, swallowing hard just to hear the hurt sound he makes.

Bucky sags and Steve rolls him to his back, letting his cock fall free as he catches his breath. His throat is sore in a way that makes him burn up, and he can feel tears in his eyes, drool running down his chin.

He must look a mess, because Bucky blinks his eyes open to look up at him and he chokes, throwing his head back. “Holy shit,” he hisses, chest heaving as he shuts his eyes. “Steve, what the fuck.”

Steve chuckles breathlessly as he smirks down at Bucky laying all flushed beneath him. “Good?” he asks, and his voice is hoarse.

“So good,” Bucky breathes. He swallows hard, and Steve watches his bruised throat work before he bends in to lick at the marks.

Steve is only really peripherally aware of his own need now that Bucky is sated. He could happily lay above him and mouth hungrily at his throat for another hour, let his hands wander, rub his fingers so sweetly over his wet hole.

Bucky is less patient.

“Come on,” he begs, shoving Steve’s pants down to take his cock in a firm grip. His eyes are fevered, desperate, and the wash of his orgasm hasn’t tempered the fire a bit. “Fill me up. Make… make me _yours_.”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Steve breathes, rutting into Bucky’s fist. It’s good, so good, he can’t catch his breath. He wants to sink like a stone to the bottom of this moment and drown in it. He digs his fingers into the meat of the back of Bucky’s thigh and hoists it up, bending him near in half as he hovers over him.

His eyes rake greedily over his body, down his slim torso, over each rib, along the dark trail of hair that leads to his half-hard cock. Nothing will ever look so good as Bucky folded up underneath him like this. Steve knows it.

He takes his own dick from Bucky’s hand and bends down to press the head of it over his soft hole, and Steve holds his breath there for a moment as he lets the anticipation swallow him up. His love is a river rising, and he’s ready to drown.

“Love you, baby,” he says softly, out of breath as he sinks in just enough to feel the squeeze of Bucky’s body over his cock. 

Bucky whines high in his throat and squirms. “Love you,” he breathes. “So much. Come on. Do it.”

Steve groans and buries himself an inch at a time, reveling in the hot squeeze, the soft give under the pressure. Bucky moans a long, satisfied sigh. It’s divine.

He bottoms out with a strangled sound, one that Bucky echoes so sweetly. Time freezes right there, the world stops spinning just so Steve can lay there buried in Bucky, crawling his way toward something both familiar and inevitable. 

He swears he's seen these silver eyes like this before, clouded with lust and longing, wet with unshed tears, blinking slowly up at Steve with utter bliss. He has that moment again, one he’s had so many times over the last months, where he recognizes something in the depths of them that makes his heart feel whole.

And he’s greedy all over again. Bucky makes him like that in a way he never is. He drags out of him so slow, until just the head of him is gripped by the tight clutch of his body, and then he snaps his hips to bury himself again. He does it just to hear the pretty wounded sound Bucky makes, just to see the way his eyes roll back.

Steve dives down to devour him as his hips move in a brutal rhythm, eating up all the sweet sounds he’s making, licking into his pliant mouth to make sure he tastes himself on Steve’s tongue. 

Bucky sighs gratefully as Steve fucks him into the mattress, bouncing with every sharp snap of his hips, fingers buried in Steve’s hair as he clings and clings. Steve folds him up harder, growling when his breath comes out short and shallow because of it.

The obscene sound of skin on skin fills the bedroom, and Steve’s racing now toward deliverance. He feels the heat of pleasure pool low in his belly, burning him up. 

“Buck,” he pants, fucking in hard and deep. “You’re mine, sweetheart. You’re _mine_.”

“I am,” Bucky cries, voice tight as he drags Steve in by the hair. They’re pressed as close as they can get, sharing air more than they’re kissing, and Bucky huffs the most lovely moan. “And you know what?”

Steve looks down at him, wide eyed with wonder. “What?” he breathes, body tingling as he shakes there above him.

Bucky’s kiss-bitten lips part and he sighs, and the softest smile graces his pretty face. “You’re _mine_ , Steve.”

Steve makes a sound like he’s been shot, and that’s it. He shoves in hard and holds there, shivering as his orgasm rolls over him like summer thunder through mountains, slow and hot and soul-shaking. His breath chokes out of him as his cock throbs and empties deep.

Bucky gasps, sharp and sudden, and his dick jumps against Steve’s belly and spills between them, wet and sticky over Steve’s t-shirt. His eyes are wide, awed, and he quakes through it as Steve pets him and ruts in lazily. 

They slow, and then still, and everything falls back into night-silence that is only cut by their heavy breathing. Steve peels off his shirt and wipes tenderly at Bucky’s skin, cooing at the soft huffs of overstimulation that Bucky makes.

He pulls out gingerly and wipes him up there, too, before he's throwing his clothes off the bed and yanking the covers up over the both of them. He looks at Bucky, who smiles at him so sweetly, and he freezes in place.

The sudden clarity that douses the flames of Steve’s desire makes him panic. His mind replays all the times Bucky has blinked out of existence over and over, and fear clenches his heart.

“Don’t leave,” he cries quietly as he buries his hands in Bucky’s hair. “Please don’t leave again.”

Bucky whines softly and pulls Steve close, pressing his face against Steve’s neck. “Don’t want to,” he breathes. “Never again.”

“You picked me,” Steve says. “You picked _me_.”

“It was an easy choice to make, honey,” Bucky murmurs as he cards his fingers through Steve’s hair. “You’re all I have. All I want.”

Tears spill from Steve’s eyes as he lays there surrounded by Bucky, wrapping him up tight, clutching him with all his heart. “I want you to be happy,” he whispers. “I want you to be happy here, with me.”

Bucky sighs and clings tighter. “Every second I’ve spent with you has been happier… than anything I’ve felt in a long time. You gave me a story worth writing. Thank you, Stevie. Thank you.”

Steve chokes on a sob and rolls to his side to pull Bucky close. “I was so tired, Buck,” he cries. “So tired.”

“I know you were, honey love,” Bucky whispers as he rubs his thumb over Steve’s damp cheek. His eyes are soft, fond, and it makes the breath shudder out of Steve’s chest as he sags. “I want you to sleep, alright? I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

“Promise?” Steve breathes, even as his body starts to slow, as his brain starts to turn off. “Stay.”

Bucky stretches up to kiss so sweetly at Steve’s lips. “Promise. Rest. I’ll be here.”

Steve sighs as sleep nips at his heels. “I love you,” he says, again and again. “Never loved anything like I love you.”

He drifts to a warm place, a safe place, and he hears Bucky saying it back.

It is a baptism.

——

Steve wakes to the sun burning through the gap in his curtains. It lays like a blade of heat across his face, and he frowns as he takes a deep breath and stretches like a cat. His joints pop, his muscles shiver, and then he relaxes.

He feels _good_. He slept so soundly.

A yawn cracks him open as he blinks his heavy eyes open, and he’s reminded of why.

There’s another body in his bed, half-buried under his thick comforter. Steve traces his eyes over the curve of a spine, the slope of shoulders, and he’s filled with awe. He gently lifts the blanket to look underneath.

And there he is. Bucky.

He’s sound asleep on his stomach facing Steve, cheeks pink from the warmth of the blanket covering him, and his lashes flutter gently as he dreams. He looks so sweet, so soft, and Steve is only a man. He rolls to lay half over him, carding his fingers through his fluffy hair, and he sighs as a grin splits his cheeks.

“Bucky,” he coos, bending in to press his words to a warm cheek. “Wake up, sweetheart.”

Bucky stirs, making little sleepy noises that wound Steve to the depths. “Steve,” he breathes as he rolls to his side. His hand comes up to bury in Steve’s hair, eyes still closed as he clings and sags down into the mattress.

“Hi, baby,” Steve murmurs, ducking down to kiss Bucky’s cheek. “Good morning.”

The slow smile that Bucky gives him in return is stunning. It melts all the ice off of his heart, makes his blood run hot, settles something in him that has been hurt and miserable for a long time. “Morning.”

Steve feels the heat of the sun radiating through the bedroom, can see how bright it is through the curtains, and a sharp _want_ drives between his ribs like a blade. He pecks another kiss to Bucky’s cheek and stands, padding naked as the day he was born over to the window. 

“Wanna see something real quick, Buck, close your eyes.”

Bucky obediently does, still smiling softly, and Steve throws the curtains open.

And God, if that isn’t the most stunning thing he’s ever seen.

Bucky’s caramel hair shines with streaks of gold in the sunlight, and his skin is sun-kissed and freckled. The light lays over him like a blanket, highlighting the dips and curves of his muscle, his ribs, his hips. Steve vows to draw him like this, laid out bare over Steve’s soft sheets, languorous as he shakes off a deep sleep.

And then he opens his eyes, and Steve’s breath is stolen.

If he thought the silver of them was stunning in the moonlight, it’s divine in the sun, the lightest shade of blue that Steve has ever seen. There’s a ring of indigo around the depths of his pupils, and Steve needs that down on paper, too. His hand twitches as he longs for his paints.

A slow smirk curls full red lips and Steve shakes his head to clear it. Bucky is laughing quietly. “You’re staring, Stevie,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling with amusement.

“You’re just so pretty,” Steve breathes, still overcome. “I haven’t seen you in this much sun before.”

Bucky sighs as his smile softens. “Come here, honey,” he says gently, reaching out with his left hand. Steve goes to him immediately, drawn in like a magnet.

“I love you,” he says, voice tight. “You’re still here.”

“Told you I’d stay this time,” Bucky murmurs. “Didn’t I?” His eyes are so fond, and the vines surrounding Steve’s heart start to loosen. No longer suffocating, they shrink back, replaced by a warmth that makes Steve forget what it feels like to drown in frigid waters.

“You did,” he says, falling back into the bed to lay beside Bucky. He shuffles in close and rolls Bucky to his back, raking his eyes down his golden body as he takes his fill. 

“I’m real,” Bucky whispers.

Steve looks up and sees tears in Bucky’s eyes. His breath catches. “You’re real.”

Bucky swallows and sniffles. “And so are you.”

The smile Steve gives him is full of relief. “I am.”

It’s quiet for a moment as they just drink each other in, silver eyes on ocean blue, and Steve’s body melts to a puddle. He bends in to ghost his lips over Bucky’s, reveling in his warmth, the softness of his skin, the feel of him under his hands. 

It’s so right. It’s all so right.

“I’ll have to write this one down,” Bucky murmurs as a slow smile creeps up his cheeks. “Think it might be a bestseller.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “I think it just might be, Buck. Can’t wait to see.”

The stillness of morning blankets them, warm and soft and serene, and Steve knows he hasn’t felt this rested in all his life. As he looks down at the man from the woods he has a moment of gratitude. Whatever god saw fit for them to meet is a benevolent one, and he’ll gladly thank them every day.

Bucky smiles up at him, and a little piece of his soul finally, _finally_ snaps into place. A careful hope blooms like a rose in his chest, and he lets it grow and grow until he can feel it against his heart.

He sighs.

——

——

A cabin stands alone next to a rolling river, tucked away in the snowy mountains of Latveria, and a woman sits on the front step with a cup of tea. Her red hair hangs in heavy waves over her shoulders, and she’s smiling.

“He’s home, Vis,” she murmurs.

Vision peeks out the front door, drying his hands on a dish towel. “Barnes?”

“Yes,” Wanda says as she sighs. Her eyes glow red as they look off into the far distance, and part of her isn’t in this place anymore. She’s watching over the counterpart of one of her dearest friends.

“I couldn’t let them be alone, Vis. I couldn’t.”

Vision sits beside her, and his arm curls around her waist to pull her close. “I know, darling,” he says gently. “I know you couldn’t.”

She turns to Vision, red eyes clearing and brow furrowing as she feels the need to explain herself. “They belong to each other. They cannot exist without the other. Their universes were cruel for making it so.”

Vision smiles so softly, and it is very knowing. “The universes are often cruel, Wanda. You of all people know this.”

Wanda sighs and turns her eyes back to the mountains. The red of her magic glows in them again, and she watches the Bucky who had no Steve marry the Steve who had no Bucky. She thinks of her own Steve, long dead, and the man he’d loved and lost.

She thinks of Pietro. She thinks of Thanos. She thinks of Westview.

“Yes,” she murmurs. “I know.” A silence hangs between them, heavy with understanding, heavy with heartache. “But I made this one right. It was the least I could do for them.”

Vision lifts one gentle hand and tips Wanda’s chin up so that she’s looking at him. “It was a kind thing you did, my darling. They know it, if not exactly what happened.”

Wanda smiles, and relief washes over her like a warm wave. “Thank you, my love. It is nice to see some happiness. Would you like to watch them marry?”

He ducks in and presses a sweet kiss to her cheek. “Show me.”

She lifts her hand and red flows out like smoke. She touches the tips of her fingers to Vision’s temple, and they sigh in unison.

“The flowers are so lovely, don’t you think?” Wanda asks as she closes her eyes to see it better. “I adore tulips.”

“Mm,” Vision hums. “Anemones. Quite beautiful. And the Captain looks so happy he could burst.”

Wanda laughs lightly and she nods. “I’ve never seen him so pink before. Precious.”

The ceremony goes on as Wanda sits with her soulmate in the foothills of high mountains, and together they share a slice of happiness they were not lucky enough to witness themselves. 

“Natasha is so beautiful,” she says wistfully. 

“She is. She looks very happy with Sam.”

Wanda looks at her alternate self where she’s wrapped in Pietro, and she beams. “They all do.”

——

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic another heartbreak. Really can’t help myself at this point. Hope you like pining and angst and made-for-each-other drama because it’s all I’m really capable of right now haha
> 
> I’m writing a spooky real book in my spare time and even though I’m terrified of ghosts there’s something that can be so hauntingly beautiful about ghost stories. So this was born.
> 
> (Bucky looks like 2009 fluffy haired Seb Stan, Steve is circa Civil War Steve) 
> 
> As always, I love my boys, they love each other, so enjoy yet another love letter to these two super soldier soulmates. Thank you for reading, you guys have all been so lovely to me as a new fic writer and I love hearing what you think about these stories.
> 
> Catch me on tumblr @inevitablemeow
> 
> <3 Meggo
> 
> (ps. I adore you Wanda, you beautiful, precious woman)


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